With its own growing roster of gadgets, it may only be a matter of time before Google follows in Apple 's footsteps by opening its own retail stores.

Crain’s New York Business is reporting that Google is close to signing a lease for 8,000 square feet at 131 Greene St. in Manhattan’s trendy SoHo district, down the block from Apple’s own SoHo location.

Ascot Properties NYC lists 131 Greene St. in its online property portfolio. Lucky Bhalla, president of Ascot, told The Wall Street Journal in a brief phone interview Wednesday that the Crain’s report is “absolutely false.” A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.

Google has been shopping for space in SoHo for some time, said Faith Hope Consolo, chairwoman of the retail group at New York’s Douglas Elliman Real Estate. “They’ve been talking to everybody,” Consolo said. Last fall, she said a Google scout investigated a different retail space on Greene Street that she was representing.

The company could use retail space to show off its various gadgets, including the Nexus line of smartphones and tablets, the Chromebook Pixel laptop, as well as its Chromecast device for connecting TVs to the Internet.

Adding to the roster, later this year Google plans to offer for public sale its Internet-connected Google Glass eyewear, as well as a Google smartwatch.

Google has some retail experience already. It has employees posted in Best Buy stores, helping to sell various Google products; it also works with Wal-Mart and Office Depot, among others. Last winter it opened temporary stores called “Winter Wonderlabs” in six U.S. cities to show off its products.

Greene Street would be an auspicious place to open a store, said Douglas Elliman’s Consolo, who said the joke in real estate circles is that Greene Street “is where the green is found.” A block away from Apple, and the possible Google location, on Greene sit Tiffany and Louis Vuitton.